Viktor Orbán: “We let go of the delusion of multiculturalism before it turned Hungary into a refugee camp”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gave his State of the Nation address recently. It is a remarkable text by the standards of our time. The average Western leader will obsess about gross domestic product, free trade, “European integration,” competitiveness,” supposed Russian and Iranian threats, gender and racial “equality,” ad nauseum, making endless moralistic calls as good in and of themselves.

Orbán presents a very different vision, one denouncing neoliberalism, vaunting national sovereignty, calling for higher fertility, and, most importantly, rejecting multiculturalism and embracing “biological survival and continuance.” He wants what he calls a “civic Hungary,” Christian-Democratic and conservative, a country which could help address “some serious questions tower[ing] over European civilization, the European people and, in particular, European leaders.” Extracts from the speech follow.

Orbán tells us on immigration:

Terrorist organizations recruit fighters to join their ranks from among immigrants living in the continent’s western part, while the southern borders of the EU – including our own state’s borders – are besieged by waves of modern-day migration, in the face of which increasingly frustrated states and governments are at a loss. […]

Europe is facing questions which can no longer be answered within the framework of liberal multiculturalism.Can we shelter people, many of whom are unwilling to accept European culture, or who come here with the intent of destroying European culture?

Well said.

Orbán is interesting because he has chosen to remain within the European Union and NATO. Indeed, his party Fidesz continues to caucus within the European People’s Party in the European Parliament, the coalition of mainstream Christian-Democratic partyies (like German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s). He’s pushing the limits of political correctness from within the system. While asserting an independent foreign policy, including closer ties with Russia, he notes:

Naturally moderation is also important in foreign affairs. In fact, that is just where it is particularly required. It is well to know our limits, in order to avoid the fate of Tigger in Winnie-the-Pooh, whose bouncing got him into trouble.

Orbán rightly observes upon the debilitating mental prison and (self-)censorship Europeans have to come to be dominated by since the Second World War:

Europe today continues to huddle behind the moats of political correctness, and has built a wall of taboos and dogmas around itself.

Orbán tells us that the naïve pre-financial-crisis world of ever-expanding material wealth (and equality, he might add) will not return. He condemns neoliberalism and multiculturalism in the same breath:

We therefore let go of neoliberal economic policy, and perhaps we did so as late as we possibly could have; we let go of the policy of austerity, just before we were about to share the fate of Greece; we let go of the delusion of the multicultural society before it turned Hungary into a refugee camp, and we let go of liberal social policy which does not acknowledge the common good and denies Christian culture as the natural foundation – and perhaps the only natural foundation – for the organization of European societies. We decided to face the barrage of unfair attacks and accusations, and also let go of the dogma of political correctness.

Orbán notes: “And as far as I see it, Hungarian people are by nature politically incorrect – in other words, they have not yet lost their common sense.”

The same could be said of most other Central-Eastern Europeans as well. Having lived under the hard political Marxism of Communist Party dictatorship, they have been for now inoculated against the soft cultural Marxism of Franz Boas, the Frankfurt School, Stephen J. Gould, and all the other pseudoscientific and anti-European theories peddled by the Left. Unfortunately, the Anglo-American world and Western members of the European Union (led by France and Germany) are seeking to impose these ethnomasochist principles and falsehoods upon Central-Eastern Europeans through cultural encroachment and European law.

Orbán adds:

They [Hungarians] want to free themselves from the modern-day debt slavery that they were driven into by foreign currency loans.They do not want to see their country thronging with people from different cultures, with different customs, who are unable to integrate; people who would pose a threat to public order, their jobs and livelihoods.

Again, rejection of transnational usury and ethnic balkanization in the same breath.

The prime minister notes very perceptively on the “tolerance” of liberals:

[S]omething which we now experience personally on a daily basis [is that] liberals are extremely tolerant – they are only intolerant of fascists. But it is surely not their fault that everyone else – everyone except for them – is a fascist. Yes, we must understand that liberal politics only ever recognizes two kinds of opinion: its own and the wrong one.

Orbán powerfully remarks upon the deathly economic determinism of Western elites today:

The modern world sees economic facts as the ones that truly count. It may be right, but I would attach higher priority to facts related to life. Above all, the facts which determine our biological survival and continuance.

Hear, hear! What good is 5% GDP growth, perhaps allowing one to buy another SUV, if our people becomes extinct? You get this kind of economistic insanity among Eurocrats – all individuals being reduced to interchangeable atoms – who when pondering the catastrophically low sub-replacement level fertility rates of Europeans and our aging societies, conclude we should therefore be replacing our hollow generations (about a third of each one) with Africans and Muslims.

Orbán raises concern about the fertility rate:

Life in Hungary presents us with facts that surprise even the most pessimistic of people. More children were born last year than at any time in the last five years. The so-called total fertility rate – that is, the number of children born into a family – was 1.41 in 2014; this is its highest value since 1997, though still not high enough. The number of marriages has increased continuously since 2010; it rose by 9% in 2014 alone. Let me remind you that between 2002 and 2010 the number of marriages in Hungary fell by 23%.

Today, European leaders and media have shown infinitely more interest in promoting “gender equality” than in something much more fundamental: a fertility rate allowing the survival of our peoples. Because, in the absence of more indigenous European children, we will eventually have Afro-Muslim majorities across Europe. Self-destructive liberals are blind to the obvious fact that the new majorities – coming from countries where polygamy and even female genital mutilation are often the norm – will not be very sympathetic to appeals to “gender equality” from whiny, over-coddled White women.

Orbán notes agreement with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on national sovereignty:

I once asked President Erdoğan why the controversies surrounding Turkey are so fierce. It was a canny question, but you can surely see through my gambit. He said that foreign countries, including the largest ones, must understand that all the Turks want is to be allowed to be Pashas in their own country. This is a very apt way of summing up the notion of national sovereignty. We cannot be successful if we can only be servants in our own country, if we have no independence. National sovereignty is a fundamental question. National sovereignty gives us a better life, which is our core interest.

The prime minister pledges to protect Hungarians from the machinations of bankers and Brussels: “We must protect hardworking Hungarians from being exploited and cheated.”

Intriguingly, Orbán mentions the value of genetic science:

I should also mention here that in my view it is likewise the Government’s duty to prepare Hungary not only for tomorrow but also for the day after tomorrow. To prepare Hungary for climate change that seems irreversible, and to prepare for a new wave of technological breakthroughs, including the latest developments in medical genetics announced in London only the other day.

He makes a veiled attack possibly referring to George Soros: “We may come to find ourselves reproached for living the high life by communist billionaires.”

I have no idea if Orbán and his Fidesz government are ruling well. I regret his persecution and harassment of White Advocates and European Identitarians in Budapest last October. But at the very least, isn’t it wonderful to have a European Head of Government voice such obvious and yet absolutely necessary truths? It shows that, very practically, a different kind of politics is possible. Orbán is a politician and no doubt his words are in part driven by political opportunism, as his government has become somewhat less popular in recent months. That does not make his analysis any less correct.

I don’t know if Orbán will raise the birth rate or stop immigration sufficiently. But I do know that the first step towards solving a problem is recognizing it. Having the elite institutions of a society – leaders and media – identify a problem and exhort the people to address it, has an effect. Eventually, awareness of the problem trickle down to all sections of society, new policies are implemented and individuals change their behavior.

Europeans are increasingly waking up as day after day more alarming facts come to light. Just last month the Italian Minister of Health lamented: “We are at the threshold where people who die are not being replaced by newborns. That means we are a dying country.” Meanwhile, the EU’s top border control official has warned “there are from 500,000 to a million migrants ready to leave from Libya.” Such stark facts can only encourage hard thinking in all but the most feckless and brainwashed.

The importance of recognizing basic truths and common sense cannot be overstated. White Christians are massive under-represented and indeed outnumbered by Jews in the Ivy Leagues, no doubt reflecting similar ethnic power imbalances across elite American institutions. By 2100, the United Nations projects that the population of Africa will reach over 4 billion due to staggeringly high Sub-Saharan fertility. Whites will become a minority in the United States by 2043. Indigenous Europeans will become a minority in the United Kingdom by the 2060s, with Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and other countries following shortly thereafter. By 2100, we will be reduced to being small minorities across the former European world – either living behind high walls amid fierce violence as in Mexico, Brazil and South Africa – or simply ethnically cleansed as in Kosovo and Zimbabwe.

If trends do not change, historians, probably of East Asian extraction, will be puzzled at the astounding reversal of fortunes and rapid decline of the European peoples who in less than two centuries would have gone from being masters of most of the world to vulnerable minorities in their own former homelands. How were European seized by such collective insanity? Let them at least note that there were some discordant notes. That Central and Eastern Europeans like Prime Minister Orbán tried to warn their corrupted Western brethren of the dangers ahead. We still have time to listen.